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ICTION  AS  ART  AND  LIFE 


ROBERT  SAUNDERS  DOWST 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 

IN  MEMORY  OF 

Ernest  Dawson 


PRESENTED  BY 

Robert  B.   Campbell 


Digitized  by  tine  Internet  Arciiive 

in  2008  witii  funding  from 

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littp://www.arcliive.org/details/fictionasartlifeOOdows 


"The  the  wise  man  all  the  world's  a  soil." — Ben  Johnson. 


Fiction  as  Art  and  Life 


By 
ROBERT  SAUNDERS  DOWST 

Author  of 

"The  Technique  of  Fiction  Writing" 

"A  TheoiT  of  Prose  Fiction" 


THE    EDITOR    COMPANY 
RIDGEWOOD,    NEW    JERSEY 


r 


Copyright    1919    by 

THE    EDITOR    COMPANY 

The   Station  Place  Presa 

William   R.    Kane 


TO  MY  MOTHER 


BOOKS  BY  ROBERT  SAUNDERS  DOWST 

The  Technique  of  Fiction  Writing $1.75 

A  Theory  of  Prose  Fiction , 60 

Fiction  as  Art  and  Life 60 


PREFACE 

The  present  essay,  like  its  predecessor,  "A  Theory 
of  Prose  Fiction,"  has  to  do  with  matters  taken  up 
from  the  technical  angle  in  "The  Technique  of  Fiction 
Writing,"  but  the  treatment  is  historical  and  critical, 
rather  than  directly  expositive.  However,  it  has  not 
been  my  purpose  to  write  a  conventional  text-book, 
with  all  its  neat  little  docketings  and  labelings  of 
schools  and  tendencies;  instead,  I  have  sought  to  indi- 
cate and  discuss  briefly  the  one  great  process  of  de- 
velopment in  fiction,  the  emergence  of  the  more  or  less 
conscious  conception  of  the  art  as  a  means  to  exhibit 
life,  and  thereby  to  interest,  rather  than  as  a  means 
merely  to  entertain  through  narration  of  a  conventional 
plot  or  story,  attractive  largely  by  its  novelty,  mar- 
velousness,  or  complexity  of  intrigue.  It  is  trite 
enough  to  say  that  a  story  should  be  a  "phase  of  life," 
"slice  of  life,"  "heart-throb,"  or  what  not — and  all  the 
professional  and  professorial  exhorters  on  fiction- 
technique  and  allied  matters  duly  say  it — but  in  reading 
discussion  of  the  art  of  fiction  I  never  have  met  with 
any  intelligible  statement  of  the  relation  between  a 
story  as  a  work  of  art,  that  is,  a  definite,  organic  thing, 
with  beginning  and  end,  and  as  a  vehicle  to  exhibit  the 
stuff  of  life,  real  or  ideal.  To  do  work  that  is  worthy, 
work  that  will  impress  a  reader  by  subjecting  him  to 
the  power  of  each  story,  the  artist  in  fiction  must  grasp 

5 


.S88B27 


6  FICTION  AS  ART  AND  LIFE 

that  relation  in  all  its  implications,  and  thousands  fail 
where  one  succeeds.  Properly  approached,  the  matter 
is  a  simple  one  to  understand;  the  writer  who  does 
understand  it  will  come  to  his  work  with  deeper  insight, 
new  zest,  and  greater  resources.  I  have  often  thought 
it  a  pity  that  so  many  deft  technicians  should  whittle 
and  pare  away  at  their  carefully  elaborated,  conven- 
tional stories,  when  a  little  consideration  of  the  plain 
nature  of  their  art  would  show  them  the  way  to  become 
masters  rather  than  craftsmen — at  least  would  permit 
their  substantive  powers  to  reach  full  growth.  In  "A 
Theory  of  Prose  Fiction"  I  attempted  briefly  to  state 
the  relation  between  a  story  as  a  work  of  art  and  as 
a  bit  of  life,  the  co-existence  of  form  and  content; 
here  I  develop  the  same  matter  historically.  It  is  of 
the  very  greatest  importance,  both  to  one  who  would 
write  fiction  and  to  one  who  would  estimate  the  work 
of  others  justly  and  adequately,  and  its  importance 
is  my  excuse  for  this  book  and  the  other. 

To  avoid  possible  misunderstanding,  let  me  dis- 
claim any  intention  to  spread  the  current  propaganda 
of  "realism."  So  many  reverberating  artillery-salvos 
have  been  exchanged  between  the  critical  schools  over 
"realism"  and  "romanticism"  as  opposed  artistic  philo- 
sophies that  it  is  quite  impossible  to  mention  "life"  as 
the  content  proper  for  fiction  without  setting  up  in  a 
reader's  mind  unfortunate  currents  of  association.  I 
might  have  mentioned  the  matter  in  the  text,  but,  in 
so  small  a  book,  space,  like  time,  is  fleeting,  and  I  de- 
sired to  develop  my  own  argument  in  peace.  It  should 
be  enough  to  state  here  that  when  I  mention  "life"  I 
do  not  mean  "real"  life,  that  assumed  verity  impossible 
to  test,  but  rather  use  the  term  to  indicate  that  the 
proper  content  of  fiction  is  man's  possible  or  conceiv- 
able experience,  presented  as  experience  and  not  merely 
as  a  series  of  events  physically  related  as  items  of  a 


FICTION  AS  ART  AND  LIFE  7 

conventional  plot  or  intrigue.  In  other  words,  the 
writer  of  fiction  who  displays  a  phase  of  life,  of  man's 
experience,  as  he  has  seen  or  guessed  it  in  reality  or 
imagined  it  in  his  dreams,  is  dealing  with  "life"  within 
my  use  of  the  term.  The  specific  work  he  finally  ex- 
hibits may  be  the  "Legeia"  of  a  Poe,  the  "Scarlet  Let- 
ter" of  a  Hawthorne,  the  "Crime  and  Punishment"  of  a 
Dostoievsky,  the  "Way  of  All  Flesh"  of  a  Butler,  or 
the  "Don  Quixote"  of  a  Cervantes,  even  the  "Alice  in 
Wonderland"  of  a  Carroll. 


Tales  and  stories — prose  fictions,  in  the  dry  mod- 
ern phrase — have  been  told  since  first  there  were  men 
to  tell  them  and  to  enjoy  the  telling,  and  in  an  art  of 
an  antiquity  so  respectable  one  must  expect  to  dis- 
cover a  process  of  growth  and  development,  at  least  of 
change.  And  the  art  of  fiction  indeed  has  altered  under 
the  hands  of  those  who  have  practiced  it,  in  accordance 
with  an  alteration  in  their  more  or  less  unconscious 
conception  of  its  proper  content  and  purpose.  If  one 
examines  the  fairy-tales  of  the  East  and  the  Teutonic 
peoples,  the  earliest  fictions  that  have  been  preserved 
to  us,  apart  from  the  semi-philosophical  myths  of  all 
primitive  races,  one  sees  that  the  apparent  purpose  of 
fiction  was  to  entertain  through  exhibition  of  men 
and  women  involved  in  novel,  bizarre,  or  even  impossi- 
ble courses  of  action ;  but  if  one  flutters  over  the  leaves 
ci  the  centuries  and  comes  to  the  finest,  most  significant 
fiction  of  the  past  hundred  years — the  work  of  Balzac, 
Hawthorne,  Thackeray,  Dostoievsky,  Tolstoi,  Butler, 
and  others — one  discovers  that  the  great  moderns,  in 
their  great  works,  at  any  rate,  have  forsaken  bare 
novelty  and  the  marvelous  as  means  to  appeal  to 
readers,  and  have  turned  instead  to  the  portrayal  of 
-life,  real  or  ideal,  as  they  have  seen,  imagined,  or 
dreamed  it. 

8 


FICTION  AS  ART  AND   LIFE  9 

In  its  broad  outlines,  this  process  of  change  or  de- 
velopment is  sufficiently  obvious.  Traced  piecemeal, 
step  by  step,  from  book  to  book  and  author  to  author, 
it  reveals  itself  with  some  loss  of  emphasis,  for  no 
course  of  natural  development  functions  evenly  and 
uniformly.  As  the  greater  number  of  human  societies 
have  progressed  for  a  time,  then  lost  the  initiative  of 
advance  and  foully  stagnated,  so  the  stream  of  fiction, 
at  various  times,  with  various  peoples,  and  in  various 
tongues,  has  stagnated  in  periods  of  imitation,  decad- 
ence, and  mere  trash.  But  if  one  examines  the  works 
that  mark  the  beginning  and  end  of  the  developmental 
process — passes  from  tales  of  "Cinderella"  and  "Alladin 
and  the  Wonderful  Lamp"  to  the  stories  in  Barrie's  "A 
Window  in  Thrums,"  from  Ann  Radchffe's  "Mysteries  of 
IJdolpho"  or  Mary  Shelley's  "Frankenstein"  to  Balzac's 
"Lost  Illusions"  or  Butler's  "The  Way  of  All  Flesh"— 
one  cannot  but  be  impressed  not  only  with  the  fact  of 
change  but  of  radical  change.  Where  the  earlier  fic- 
tions were  strictly  inhuman  in  that  they  stressed  the 
purely  marvelous  and  all  the  mechanism  of  fairyland, 
or,  as  a  concession  to  rationalism,  turned  for  sensation 
and  appeal  to  the  grotesque  and  horrible,  the  later 
works  are  strictly  human  in  that  they  affirm  by  exam- 
ple the  natural  eloquence,  appeal,  and  general  fictional 
worth  of  the  more  or  less  normal  lives  of  more  or  less 
normal  men  and  women. 

It  is  broadly  true  that  the  art  of  fiction  has  de- 
veloped thus,  gaining  in  plain  human  significance — and 
hence  in  power  to  interest  and  influence  cultured  read- 
ers, if  not  in  power  merely  to  entertain  those  who 
seek  in  reading  only  to  escape  from  reality — as  it 
reached  out  for  and  embraced  the  world  of  common 
men  and  common  facts,  finding  in  the  natural  joys, 
sorrows,  and  passions  of  toiling  humanity  a  gamut 
capable  of  tones  sweeter  than    the    elvish    mirth    of 


10  FICTION  AS  ART  AND  LIFE 

fairies,  sadder  than  the  woes  of  forsaken  princesses., 
more  dreadful  and  more  thrilhng  than  any  cry  that 
has  ever  burst  from  the  dungeons  of  any  castle  of 
romance.  The  taproot  of  true  interest  is  sympathy, 
fellow-feeling — witness  the  discerning  critic  (probably 
feminine)  who  complained  of  the  Arabian  Nights 
stories  that  one  is  apt  to  lose  interest  in  a  hero  who 
may  turn  into  a  camel — and  the  story  that  shows  the 
marvelous  and  nothing  else,  or  displays  neat  interaction 
of  intrigue  and  nothing  else,  lacks  capacity  to  reach 
the  hearts  and  minds  of  men  through  the  appeal  of 
something  like  their  own  experience.  Jack  may  slay 
the  giant  and  Jill  may  wed  the  prince — after  his  dis- 
covery of  "the  papers"  proving  her  to  be  the  gipsy- 
stolen  daughter  of  the  Grand  Duke  of  Neverwasenstein 
— but  the  real  Jack  and  Jill  who  read,  unless  they  have 
the  great  luck  to  be  children,  find  it  all  a  trifle  unreal 
and  greatly  insignificant,  that  is,  unmeaning,  in  rela- 
tion to  them  and  their  own  personal  lives.  In  the  great 
books,  on  the  other  hand,  they  glimpse  friendly  human 
faces,  grasp  for  a  moment  friendly  human  hands, 
witness  the  realization  or  defeat  of  spiritual  or  material 
aspirations  and  aims  that  they  themselves  have  enter- 
tained in  their  degree,  and  are  bound  to  the  page  by 
mutuality  of  experience,  actual  or  potential. 

As  the  race  slowly  has  developed  through  the  cen- 
turies, discovering  and  exercising  new  powers  and 
capacities,  feeling  the  concomitant  new  responsibilities 
of  social  life,  its  individual  members,  in  so  far  as  they 
have  participated  in  and  contributed  to  the  advance, 
have  lost  the  primal  capacity  to  take  keen  interest  in 
the  merely  miraculous  or  the  merely  ingenious  relation ; 
and  fiction,  likewise,  to  interest  the  newer  human  type, 
must  have  put  aside  very  largely  its  function  of  mira- 
cle-monger and  mechanical  problem-poser.  There  is 
more  in  life  than  the  men  of  bygone  ages  ever  knew  or 


FICTION  AS  ART  AND  LIFE  11 

even  guessed,  more  in  men,  both  of  powers  and  duties. 
To  interest  a  mind  that  is  at  once  able  and  representa- 
tive of  the  present  a  work  of  fiction  must  embody  a 
reaUty  of  human  experience,  a  reahty  of  fact,  caught 
from  observation,  or  a  reahty  of  conception,  snared 
from  dreams.  Not  all  minds  are  able;  still  less  are 
all  able  minds  representative  of  the  best  of  present 
humanity  in  that  they  possess  what  can  be  character- 
ized roughly  as  social  sensitiveness ;  so  it  is  that  books 
of  the  earlier  type,  harping  painfully  upon  their  one 
string  of  wonder  or  mystery,  still  find  readers.  Fiction, 
written  by  man  for  man,  has  developed  only  with  man, 
not  in  a  smooth  chronological  progression.  Jane  Aus- 
ten was  a  contemporary  of  Horace  Walpole,  or  nearly 
so,  of  Mrs.  Radcliffe  and  "Monk"  Lewis,  with  their 
horrent  claptrap;  Balzac  in  one  book  would  approach 
the  heights  of  fictional  achievement  and  in  the  next 
descend  to  the  cheapest  melodrama;  the  mass  of  Eng- 
lish fiction  went  astray  most  woefully  after  Fielding, 
perhaps  never  has  regained  the  straight  and  difficult 
path  of  complete  sincerity  and  freedom  from  mawkish- 
ness.  Only  in  Russian  can  be  found  a  fictional  literature 
which  in  the  mass  presents  a  relatively  sincere,  rela- 
tively undistorted  content  of  human  experience,  and 
the  exception  is  not  adverse  to  the  general  argument 
because  the  whole  of  Russian  literary  expression  is  so 
comparatively  recent  that  it  has  been  influenced  almost 
in  its  totality  by  the  thought-currents  of  the  new  age. 
Moreover,  though  fictional  sincerity  does  not  consist 
in  presenting  the  life-experience  of  the  poor,  neverthe- 
less the  tacit  alliance  in  Russia  between  radicalism  and 
literature  in  all  its  forms  has  tended  to  focus  the  at- 
tention of  novelists  and  short-story  writers  upon  the 
poor  and  oppressed,  Gorky's  "creatures  that  once 
were  men,"  and  it  is  certain  that  the  writer  who  con- 
cerns himself  with  the  spiritual  and  material  adven- 


12  FICTION  AS  ART  AND  LIFE 

tures  of  the  poor — the  stark,  struggling  bulk  of  man- 
kind— is  least  hkely  to  lose  touch  with  the  genuine 
reaUties  of  human  experience  and  to  build  in  froth. 
The  unique  and  surprising  excellence  of  Russian  fiction 
as  a  whole  serves  chiefly  to  emphasize  the  greatly 
varying  capacities  of  writers  and  tastes  of  readers  in 
countries  where  literature  has  been  more  a  thing  of 
the  market-place  and  less  a  propaganda. 

What  has  just  been  said  was  not  intended  in  the 
least  to  imply  that  the  office  of  fiction  is  to  present 
socially  important  phases  of  contemporary  life,  to  be 
a  mere  tool  in  the  work  of  social  betterment,  for  the 
one  office  and  aim  of  fiction  is  to  interest,  some  minds, 
at  any  rate,  the  best  minds  if  possible;  but  it  is  true 
that  the  abler  reader,  the  reader  accustomed  to  dwell 
upon  matter  humanly  significant  and  to  dismiss  matter 
humanly  insignificant,-  is  to  be  engaged  most  easily 
and  completely  by  some  reality  of  contemporary  human 
experience,  presented  as  experience  because  it  is  sig- 
nificant— hence  interesting — only  as  experience,  and 
not  as  novelty,  mystery,  or  mechanism.  To  put  it 
briefly,  the  general  advance  of  mankind  has  caused  a 
similar  development  in  fiction,  which  has  changed 
from  a  mere  vehicle  of  entertainment  into  a  source  of 
interest,  appealing  to  the  mind  of  a  reader  through 
the  real  human  significance  of  its  matter  and  to  his 
heart  through  its  men  and  women,  at  once  concrete — 
which  the  people  of  older  fiction  often  were — and 
intelHgible — which  they  often  were  not.  Truly  man 
has  changed,  and  the  art  of  the  story  has  changed 
with  him,  for  the  narrator  has  gained  insight,  and 
sees  in  his  human  material  a  more  delicate  complex,  a 
deeper  pathos,  and  a  finer  triumph. 

The  dual  aspect  of  fiction  as  art  and  as  life  or 
experience,  the  co-existence  of  form  and  content,  will 
be  discussed  in  the  following  sections ;  here  the  neces- 


FICTION  AS  ART  AND  LIFE  13 

sity  is  to  clear  the  way  for  the  discussion,  for  what 
will  be  said  as  to  the  artistic  coherence  of  a  story  de- 
pending upon  the  actual  coherence  of  the  phase  of 
experience  exhibited  would  not  be  true  of  the  older 
type  of  fiction,  from  fairy-tale  to  mechanical  romance, 
where  coherence  depends  upon  the  mere  physical  dove- 
tailing of  happening  and  happening.  In  the  mechanical 
romance,  for  instance,  a  marriage  certificate,  perhaps, 
is  lost  or  stolen,  and  the  relation  is  coherent  only  in 
that  it  states  more  or  less  pausibly  the  woes  occasioned 
by  the  loss,  but  a  relation  of  the  newer  type,  seeking 
to  interest  through  the  just  exhibition  of  human  ex- 
perience, is  coherent  in  that  the  phase  of  experience 
presented  is  one  phase,  the  finked  actions  and  reactions 
of  some  individual  human  spirit  during  a  part  or  the 
whole  of  its  life-pilgrimage.  Flaubert's  "Madame 
Bovary"  is  an  example,  coherent,  as  it  is,  not  by  virtue 
of  the  necessary  physical  connection  between  the  hap- 
penings, but  because  each  incident  springs  directly  or 
indirectly  from  the  follies  and  vices  of  the  heroine.  In 
the  older  type  of  story  the  relation  between  events  is 
physical,  in  the  newer,  physical  and  psychical,  and  dis- 
cussion true  of  the  one  is  false  of  the  other. 

The  newer  type  of  fiction,  then,  seeks  to  interest 
by  showing  experience  as  such,  rather  than  to  enter- 
tain by  displaying  marvels  or  complicating  events,  and 
if  it  were  my  purpose  to  demonstrate  the  superiority 
of  the  new  over  the  old  I  could  not  do  better  than  to  call 
attention  to  Stevenson's  "Kidnapped"  and  "The  Ebb- 
Tide,"  stories  which  interest  because  they  present 
justly  worth-while  phases  of  human  experience,  but 
which  also  possess  "plot"  in  the  mechanical  sense.  I 
am  not  concerned  with  the  point  of  merit,  but  thest> 
two  books  are  useful  to  point  the  difference  between 
the  old  and  the  new  types  of  fiction,  as  each  combines 
berth.    The  conventional  plot  of  "Kidnapped"  consists 


14  FICTION  AS  ART  AND  LIFE 

in  David's  ignorance  of  his  right  to  the  estate  of  Shaws 
and  in  the  frustration  of  his  usurping  uncle's  scheme 
tc  remove  him ;  the  real  interest  of  the  story,  however, 
does  not  reside  in  this  mechanism,  but  in  the  boy's 
experience  on  the  brig,  on  the  Isle  of  Earraid,  and  in 
the  heather,  Alan  Breck  sustaining  him  and  hostile 
elements  and  hostile  men  opposing  him.  The  conven- 
tional plot  of  "The  Ebb-Tide"  utilizes  the  circumstance 
that  a  schooner  laden  with  bottled  water  is  stolen  by 
men  who  believe  her  laden  with  champagne;  but  the 
interest  of  the  story  resides  exclusively  in  its  exhibition 
of  the  unavailing  struggle  of  an  essentially  weak  man 
tp  be  other  than  weak,  whatever  the  enterprize  engag- 
ing him,  a  justly  conceived  and  justly  presented  phase 
of  human  experience.  Exceptionally  perfect  as  was 
Stevenson's  technique,  still  it  was  not  a  new  but  rather 
the  old  technique,  with  its  conventional  plot-mechanism 
— the  fraud  on  David,  the  piratical  enterprize  of  Robert 
Herrick  and  his  companions — employed  less  as  the 
story  and  an  end  in  itself  than  as  a  mere  means  to 
initiate  definitely  and  sharply  the  phase  of  experience 
selected  for  presentation,  also  as  a  means  to  end  it  with 
equal  definition.  Stevenson  devises  the  mechanism  of 
"Kidnapped"  to  place  David  on  the  brig  and  in  the 
heather,  as  he  devises  the  mechanism  of  "The  Ebb- 
Tide"  to  place  Herrick  on  the  schooner  and  the  pearl- 
island,  not  because  the  mechanism  in  either  case  is 
greatly  interesting.  David's  struggle  with  hostile 
elements  and  hostile  men,  an  item  of  human  experience, 
and  the  inner  struggle  between  Herrick's  stronger  and 
v/eaker  selves,  a  less  tangible  item,  supply  the  sub- 
stance, the  source  of  interest,  in  each  book.  The 
mechanism  is  a  mere  adjunct,  furnishing  a  definite  be- 
ginning, the  physical  movement  of  the  story,  and  a 
definite  end.  It  is  possible  to  write  artistically  coher- 
ent fiction  without  employing  the  mechanism  of  a  con- 


FICTION  AS  ART  AND  LIFE  15 

ventional  plot— Butler's  "The  Way  of  All  Flesh,"  in 
English,  and  many  Russian  novels  are  examples — but 
mechanism,  justly  and  understandingly  employed,  is  a 
source  of  strength.  In  the  particular  case  of  Steven- 
son, whose  artistic  development  can  be  traced  clearly 
through  each  successive  book,  one  cannot  fail  to  note 
the  earher  insistence  upon  the  bare  story  for  the  story's 
sake  and  the  later  insistence  upon  specific  human 
experience  as  such,  the  emphasis  deepening,  to  the 
final  point  of  "Weir  of  Hermiston,"  as  the  writer's 
understanding  gains  in  power  and  his  hand  in  craft. 
The  inevitable  movement  in  the  work  of  any  able  and 
developing  writer  from  the  story  as  mechanism  to  the 
story  as  experience  reproduces  in  miniature  the  gen- 
eral process  of  fictional  development  that  has  been  dis- 
cussed, and  is  a  sure  indication  of  the  necessary  char- 
acter of  the  process.  On  the  one  hand,  an  able  reader 
cannot  lose  himself  in  a  relation  humanly  insignifi- 
cant; on  the  other,  the  able  writer  has  business  more 
pressing  than  to  spin  complexities  or  to  retail  marvels. 
To  trace  in  detail  the  evolution  of  fiction  from 
mechanism  to  experience,  from  a  means  to  amuse  to  a 
means  to  interest  and  subject  a  reader,  would  involve  a 
separate  examination  of  the  two  chief  fictional  litera- 
tures of  Europe,  the  English  and  the  French,  and  it 
would  be  difficult  to  avoid  some  treatment  of  Russian 
work;  but  perhaps  enough  has  been  said  to  serve  as 
foundation  for  discussion  directed  to  show  that  the 
presentation  of  experience  as  such  and  for  its  own 
sake  does  not  involve  incoherence,  any  failure  in  point 
of  form  and  art,  because  coherence  in  the  substance 
of  a  story,  the  phase  of  experience  it  presents,  implies 
coherence  in  its  form  and  outer  texture.  First,  then, 
of  the  artistic  question,  the  point  of  form. 


II 

Perhaps  not  too  many  professors  of  aesthetics 
would  dissent  from  the  definition  that  a  work  of  art 
is  something  that  gives  pleasure  in  the  mere  act  of 
perception,  apart  from  all  considerations  of  utility,  but 
my  present  concern  with  fiction  as  an  art  requires 
some  more  immediately  practical  statement  of  artistic 
quahty,  a  statement  that  shall  emphasize  the  formal 
and  technical  elements  of  the  matter  rather  than  the 
philosophical.  From  the  technical  viewpoint,  then, 
any  work  of  art  is  a  creation  or  adaptation  in  some 
one  of  various  materials — sounds,  words,  pigments, 
stone,  even  mimicry,  in  the  case  of  the  dramatic  artist — 
which  gives  pleasure  in  perception  less  because  the 
perceiving  person  dwells  lovingly  upon  the  thousand 
and  one  little  miracles  of  execution  in  detail  that  go 
to  make  the  whole — which  is  the  pleasure  of  a  brother 
v/orker  in  the  craft — than  because  the  finished  work 
is  an  organic  whole,  without  loose  ends  or  interpolated 
fragments,  and  preaches  a  single  message  of  truth, 
which  is  beauty.  The  sole  fundamental  technical  oi 
formal  quality  of  a  work  of  art  is  unity,  singleness  of 
function  as  a  whole. 

One  need  not  be  an  amateur  in  painting  or  music, 
for  instance,  to  appreciate  the  singleness  or  unity  of  a 
landscape  or  a  song,  or  to  realize  that  in  the  unity  of 
each  resides  its  formal  artistic  quahty.    But  the  art  of 

16 


FICTION  AS  ART  AND   LIFE  17 

fiction  is  another  and  a  more  complicated  matter, 
manipulating,  as  it  does,  a  dual  or  twofold  substance, 
words,  visual  and — in  a  sense — audible  symbols,  and  the 
underlying  realities  symbolized,  so  that  the  complete 
adequacy  of  the  statement  that  the  formal  artistic 
quahty  of  a  work  of  fiction  resides  in  its  unity  or  single- 
ness may  not  at  once  appear.  What  is  this  much 
mooted  unity  ?  how  can  a  work  of  fiction,  dealing  with 
a  thing  so  heterogeneous  as  human  experience,  possi- 
bly manifest  it?  are  legitimate  questions;  but  it  can 
be  shown  that  the  idea  of  coherence,  singleness,  unity, 
has  real  meaning  in  relation  to  fiction.  The  only  con- 
dition precedent  to  the  demonstration  is  that  the  reader 
dismiss  entirely  from  his  mind  all  the  vaporous  modern 
discussion  of  the  short  story  and  the  esoteric  and  un- 
defined "unity"  by  possession  of  which  it  is  alleged 
to  be  unique  among  all  forms  of  prose  fiction.  Also  it 
will  be  useful  to  remember  that  the  present  discussion 
purports  to  deal  only  with  matters  of  substance,  not 
with  verbal  treatment  of  substance,  style,  which  will 
be  touched  upon  incidentally. 

In  the  first  place,  there  are  two  chief  methods  or 
modes  whereby  a  work  of  fiction  achieves  essential 
unity  and  thereby  becomes  a  work  of  art  indeed.  Since 
my  argument  is  novel,  I  have  no  convenient  catch- 
words at  hand  rendered  intelligible  by  repeated  and 
cC'ntrasting  use,  but  it  will  not  be  too  extreme  to 
characterize  these  two  basic  methods  to  achieve 
fictional  unity  as  the  mechanical  and  the  natural.  The 
shifting  of  emphasis  from  the  first  to  the  second  has 
made  the  process  of  fictional  growth  or  development 
hastily  reviewed  in  the  introductory  section.  The 
mechanical  mode  to  achieve  unity  is  to  take  some 
mechanical  complication,  intrigue,  plot — examples  are 
the  matter  of  the  slipper  in  "Cinderella,"  of  the  lamp 
in  "Alladin,"  of  David's  inheritance  in  "Kidnapped,"  of 
2 


18  FICTION  AS  ART  AND  LIFE 

the  theft  of  the  schooner  in  "The  Ebb-Tide"— and  to 
develop  the  mechanism  fully.  Since  the  plot-mechan- 
ism is  single,  self-contained  and  self-sufficient,  the 
completed  fiction  is  a  unity,  in  the  mechanical  sense, 
at  least,  and,  if  the  events  and  personalities  dealt  with 
have  true  relation,  are  mutually  influential,  the  fiction 
is  also  substantially  organic  and  a  true  natural  unity. 
So  far  as  can  be  ascertained — the  great  antiquity  of 
the  fairy-story  and  the  constant  employment  of 
mechanism  to  unify  the  type  bear  witness  here — fiction 
in  fact  did  appear  first  as  mechanism  in  the  sense  in 
which  I  have  employed  the  term.  But  the  material 
or  content  of  fiction  is  human  experience,  and  there 
have  been,  are,  and  will  be  innumerable  aspects  or 
phases  of  human  experience,  supremely  interesting  ana 
therefore  supremely  worthy  of  relation,  which  contain 
no  element  of  mechanism,  of  conventional  plot-compli- 
cation, and  which  would  suffer  only  distortion  if  told 
in  connection  with  a  mechanism  devised  solely  because 
of  the  tradition  of  plot.  These  worth-while  phases  of 
human  experience  in  the  last  analysis  consist  of  the 
actions  and  reactions  of  individual  men  and  women  in 
relation  to  themselves,  their  fellows,  and  their  natural 
environment,  and  to  present  any  straightforward,  un- 
complicated phase  of  experience  simply  as  it  is  and 
for  what  it  is  invariably  results  in  a  unified,  organic 
fiction,  a  fiction  more  essentially  and  closely  a  single 
whole  than  any  mere  mechanism,  for  the  single  phase 
of  human  experience  is  the  natural  unit  of  fiction.  Ade- 
quate presentment  of  a  phase  of  experience,  then,  is  the 
second  and  a  more  effective,  as  well  as  the  more  natural 
v/ay  to  achieve  in  fiction  the  unity  which  is  essential 
to  artistry.  Of  course  both  it  and  the  device  of  mech- 
anism may  be  employed  in  the  same  story;  I  have 
already  cited  "Kidnapped"  and  "The  Ebb-Tide"  in  this 
connection. 


FICTION  AS  ART  AND  LIFE  1» 

The  term  "phase  of  experience,"  which  I  have 
been  forced  to  use  for  lack  of  a  better  one  equally  brief, 
is  ineffective  by  reason  of  its  abstractness,  and  a  little 
discussion  and  amphfication  may  render  more  clear 
just  what  is  meant  by  the  foregoing  statement  of  the 
natural  mode  to  unify  a  work  of  fiction.  All  Ufe,  all 
human  life  is  a  struggle,  wherein  the  individual 
wrestles  with  the  elements  to  win  a  living  and  a  foot- 
hold on  the  earth,  with  his  fellows  as  their  desires  and 
necessities  interfere  with  and  cross  his,  even  with  him- 
self as  his  soul  is  buffeted  by  conflicting  impulses. 
The  result  is  an  infinite  succession  of  dramatic  conflicts, 
frequently  within  the  individual  alone,  as  when  opposed 
motives  seize  him,  frequently  between  the  individual 
and  his  natural  environment,  but  more  frequently  be- 
tween a  group  of  individuals  placed  in  opposition  by 
incompatible  motives  and  purposes.  And  any  such 
struggle  or  dramatic  .conflict  constitutes  a  phase  of 
human  experience,  as  the  term  has  been  used,  a  sub- 
stantial, and,  in  fiction,  an  artistic  unity,  having  a 
definite  beginning,  the  actual  beginning  of  the  conflict, 
L  definite  climax,  the  point  of  highest  tension  between 
the  opposed  forces  of  personality,  and  a  definite  end,  the 
end  of  the  particular  conflict,  when  some  one  or  some 
combination  among  the  forces  involved  has  shaped  the 
others.  These  small  and  great  unities  of  human  experi- 
ence, utihzed  by  the  artist  in  fiction,  will  stand  alone, 
fair  and  shapely,  without  the  support  of  mechanism. 
They  need  only  be  related  simply  as  they  would  be  per- 
ceived by  an  observer  or  experienced  by  a  participant. 

Thus  it  appears  that  any  single  phase  of  human 
experience  is  a  true  fictional  unit,  an  artistic  concep- 
tion as  well  as  an  objective  or  a  subjective  fact.  (Of 
course  the  item  of  experience  may  be  purely  imaginary, 
a  subjective  reality  only.)  A  phase  of  experience,  that 
is,  some  particular  struggle  or  conflict  between  forces 


20  FICTION  AS  ART  AND  LIFE 

of  personality,  between  personality  and  nature,  or  be- 
tween opposed  motives  in  the  same  person,  is  one  of 
life's  indivisible  atoms,  likewise  one  of  fiction's,  self- 
sufficient  and  self-contained,  beginning  when  the  forces 
involved  first  come  to  grips  and  ending  when  some  one 
has  compelled  the  others  to  yield  to  its  imperious 
power.  Quite  apart  from  mechanism  and  formal  com- 
plication of  intrigue,  each  small  desire  and  each  great 
purpose  of  all  real  and  all  imaginable  men  and  women 
furnish  material  for  artistically  coherent  fiction,  for 
each  is  certain  to  meet  opposition  either  within  the 
person,  from  his  fellows,  or  from  nature,  and  the  defeat 
or  realization  of  the  motive  is  the  story. 

In  the  short  story,  the  unifying  opposition  or  dra- 
matic struggle  must  be  strictly  single,  because  space 
for  subsidiary  conflicts  or  plots  and  the  resulting  by- 
play of  action  is  not  available  save  at  expense  of  the 
main  opposition;  in  the  novel  ox  the  romance,  on  the 
other  hand,  ideally — and,  indeed,  most  commonly — uni- 
fied by  a  main  line  of  opposition  between  the  chief 
characters,  the  minor  persons  of  the  story  frequently 
become  involved  in  secondary  intrigues  of  their  own, 
at  least  play  their  little  parts  in  the  main  intrigue. 
And  the  story  does  not  lose  unity  and  consequently 
artistic  status  thereby,  provided  the  secondary  charac- 
ters have  some  relation  to  the  cliief  persons,  and  their 
doings  are  in  fact  ramifications  and  developments  of 
the  main  business  of  the  fiction.  Yet  arbitrarily  to  tell 
three  or  four  essentially  unrelated  stories  in  one  book, 
as  did  Dickens  in  "Our  Mutual  Friend,"  is  to  sacrifice 
unity  and  force  to  presumptive  breadth  of  appeal. 
The  short  story  is  a  foiTn  of  fiction  somewhat  artificial 
in  that  it  presents  a  flash  of  life  in  the  bare  essentials 
of  personality  and  action;  the  longer  forms  are  not 
less  coherent  and  unified  simply  because  they  seek 
morie  leisurely  to  present  a  broader  asp^t  of  expierience 


FICTION  AS  ART  AND  LIFE  21 

in  a  richer  texture  of  detail.  The  short  story  can 
pretend  to  no  higher  artistry  than  that  achieved  by 
novel  or  romance  justly  treated. 

A  brief  review  of  a  few  well  known  works  of  fic- 
tion, long  and  short,  will  demonstrate  the  truth  that^ 
mechanism,  the  conventional  plot-complication,  is  not 
indispensable  to  unity,  coherence,  the  fundamental 
artistic  quahty.  "Don  Quixote"  exhibits  man  under 
domination  of  a  dream,  a  delusion,  therefore  misunder- 
standing and  misunderstood  by  all  the  world,  and  the 
book  is  a  rounded  whole  because  it  does  present  that 
phase  of  experience.  "Robinson  Crusoe"  displays  life 
in  its  rawest  terms,  the  struggle  of  naked  and  hungry 
man  against  elemental  forces  for  food,  shelter,  and  rai- 
ment; since  the  work  develops  that  one  struggle,  a 
single  phase  of  experience,  it  is  a  symmetrical  unit  and 
a  thing  of  art.  Stevenson's  short  story,  "Markheim," 
shows  a  struggle,  after  the  deed,  within  a  murderer, 
and  Dostoievsky's  "Crime  and  Punishment"  shows  Hke- 
wise  a  struggle  within  a  murderer,  before  and  after 
the  fact,  both  single  phases  of  human  experience  and 
both  substantial  and  fictional  unities.  "The  Scarlet 
Letter"  presents  the  knot  of  opposition  between  a 
woman,  her  husband,  and  her  lover,  and  is  a  strict 
artistic  unity  because  it  is  concerned  only  with  the 
initiation,  development,  and  solution  of  that  single 
dramatic  problem.  "Madame  Bovary"  utilizes  the  same 
theme,  with  emphasis  more  exclusively  upon  the 
woman,  and  is  a  coherent  artistic  whole  for  the  same 
reason.  Samuel  Butler's  fine  novel  "The  Way  of  All 
Flesh,"  Dickens'  "David  Copperfield,"  Romain  Rolland's 
"Jean  Christophe,"  and  several  of  Thackeray's  works 
present  a  whole  significant  life  instead  of  a  single 
significant  phase  of  a  life,  and  find  unity  and  artistic 
cc»herence  less  in  one  specific  dramatic  conflict  than  in 
the  succession  of  dramatic  conflicts  that  makes  the 


22  FICTION  AS  ART  AND  LIFE 

particular  life,  though,  of  course,  usually  with  one 
dominant  emphasis,  while  a  book  such  as  Tolstoi's 
"War  and  Peace"  still  more  ambitiously  seeks  unity  by 
presenting  the  conflict  between  masses  of  men,  be- 
tween societies  and  nations — in  the  particular  case  of 
"War  and  Peace"  the  bloody  duel  between  France  and 
Russia,  Napoleon  and  Alexander.  Yet  in  each  story, 
slight  or  pretentious,  the  human  opposition  is  the 
unifying,  the  artistic  principle.  To  take  a  fiction 
known  somewhat  less  than  those  just  mentioned, 
"Asra,"  the  first  work  in  August  Strindberg's  collec- 
tion of  short  stories  entitled  "Married,"  presents  the 
struggle  between  a  boy  and  his  sexual  impulses.  Sin- 
cerely, therefore  without  the  least  evil  suggestion,the 
author  shows  the  personal  conflict  within  the  boy,  and 
utilizes  that  conflict  to  show  the  more  general  opposi- 
tion between  young  manhood  and  society  in  the  par- 
ticular concerned;  the  story  is  an  artistic  unit  because 
it  is  a  substantial  unit,  presents  a  single  phase  of  hu- 
man experience.  Thomas  Hardy's  novels,  "Tess,"  "The 
Return  of  the  Native,"  "The  Mayor  of  Casterbridge," 
and  the  others,  find  unity  through  the  various  human 
oppositions  they  develop,  also  through  adequate  treat- 
ment of  the  natural  environment  of  the  characters,  or, 
more  truly,  a  strange,  Hardyesque  compound  of  nature 
and  inscrutable  fate.  As  the  persons  buffet  one  an- 
other they  turn,  from  time  to  time,  to  fend  off 
elemental  and  supernatural  forces. 

The  list  and  rapid  analysis  might  be  extended  in- 
definitely, but  enough  has  been  said,  I  think,  to  demon- 
strate that  mechanism  is  no  essential  of  artistry,  which 
is  true  unity,  in  fiction,  that  any  conventional  plot-  or 
story-idea  may  be  dispensed  with  quite  without  loss 
of  coherence,  and  that  the  writer  has  much  to  learn 
who  conceives  his  story  found  when  he  has  chanced 
upon  an  interlocking  series    of   events   involving  ele- 


FICTION  AS  ART  AND  LIFE  23 

ments  of  mystery  or  of  final  surprise,  of  mechanical 
complication  or  of  wonder.  His  business  is  with  his 
human  material,  the  men  and  women  about  him  or  the 
creatures  of  his  musings,  not  because  it  is  more  diffi- 
cult, more  "literary,"  or  more  anything  else  to  present 
life  as  it  is  or  might  be  than  to  present  artificially  ar- 
ranged events  for  their  own  sake,  but  because  the 
cultured  reader,  the  reader  we  would  all  wish  at  once 
to  be  and  to  serve,  appreciates  the  value,  the  triumph 
and  pathos,  the  zest,  at  any  rate,  of  life,  and  can  lose 
himself  in  its  presentation  more  readily  and  more  com- 
pletely than  in  any  exhibition  of  events,  merely  aa 
events,  however  neatly  dovetailing  or  arranged. 

As  was  pointed  out  in  relation  to  some  of  Steven- 
son's work,  one  may  show  life  justly  while  utilizmg  the 
device  of  mechanism,  the  conventional  "story,"  but  the 
value  of  one's  fable,  its  power  to  stimulate  real  interest, 
will  depend  upon  its  substance,  not  upon  its  physical 
outline.  Whatever  third-rate  writers  of  fiction  may 
seem  to  imply  by  their  work,  the  god  of  things  as  they 
are  did  not  create  man  solely  as  an  actor  in  highly 
pohshed  intrigues,  and  some  great  spirits — a  few  are 
named  a  page  or  two  back — have  realized  that  truth, 
and  worked  and  written  accordingly.  More  honor  to 
them. 

Even  in  the  case  of  the  story  that  is  a  unit  only  by 
virtue  of  its  mechanism,  the  pat  interaction  of  events, 
the  events  in  fact  do  dovetail  and  interact  in  building 
up  to  a  definite  end  of  the  whole  sequence;  thereby  the 
fiction  is  in  some  sense  a  work  of  art,  the  bearer  of  a 
single  message,  though  that  message  is  superficial  and 
does  not  touch  the  heart  of  things.  And  in  the  case  of 
the  story  that  is  a  unit  because  its  substance  is  a  unit, 
a  single  phase  of  human  experience,  the  events  like- 
wise build  up  to  a  definite  end  of  the  whole  sequence, 
but  they  are  more  closely  knit,  more  truly  a  progres- 


24  FICTION  AS  ART  AND  LIFE 

sion,  than  the  events  which  go  to  make  a  story  of  the 
mechanical,  physical  type,  in  that  they  spring  more 
naturally  from  the  human  material,  the  people  of  the 
fiction,  unforced  by  any  bondage  to  the  lines  of  a  con- 
ventional plot  or  intrigue.  Cinderella  is  tied  to  the 
slipper,  and  all  we  know  of  her  is  that  her  foot  was 
small,  but  Bret  Harte's  M'lis  lives  far  more  at  large 
and  naturally,  and  so  is  far  more  interesting. 

The  complication  of  events  in  the  older,  more 
mechanical  type  of  fiction,  the  intrigue,  has  always  been 
known  as  "plot,"  and  the  term,  despite  its  unfortunate 
associations  and  connotations,  perhap's  is  the  best  at 
hand  to  denote  the  essence  of  the  newer,  more  natural 
type  of  narration,  the  complication  of  opposition  be- 
tween men,  between  man  and  nature,  or  within  the 
same  man,  which  determines  and  shapes  the  events  and 
so  generates  the  living  substance  of  the  whole  story. 
But  some  fictions  lack  completely  this  unifying  princi- 
ple of  plot,  presenting  neither  an  old-fashioned  intrigue 
nor  a  natural  human  opposition,  a  true  phase  of  life; 
instead,  they  exhibit  a  mere  succession  of  episodes — 
"Sinbad  the  Sailor"  and  "Gil  Bias"  are  examples — 
interesting  in  themselves  and  by  themselves,  completely 
independent,  no  one  essential  to  the  others,  and  told 
together  purely  by  chance.  These  tales,  as  the  tend- 
ency seems  to  be  to  call  them — in  distinction  from  the 
story,  which  possesses  plot  and  where  the  events  func- 
tion together  as  a  whole — in  no  sense  are  works  of 
fictional  art.  They  are  fictions,  truly,  as  they  may  be 
works  of  art,  an  art  purely  Hterary,  that  is,  but  they 
cannot  pretend  to  strict  fictional  artistry  because  they 
lack  the  principle  of  unity  of  substance.  The  point  is  of 
value  to  enforce  the  general  argument.  A  tale  per- 
fectly told  in  point  of  language,  of  rhetoric,  is  a  work 
of  literary  art,  as  any  perfect  bit  of  writing  is  a  work 
of  literary  art,  but  it  is  not  a  work  of  fictional  art  and 


FICTION  AS  ART  AND  LIFE  25 

cannot  be,  for  the  definition  of  a  tale  is  a  fiction  that 
lacks  unity,  the  fundamental  artistic  quality,  in  that 
its  component  parts,  the  various  events,  do  not  func- 
tion together  as  a  whole,  as  steps  of  a  progression, 
but  stand  in  juxtaposition  purely  by  chance,  the  caprice 
of  the  narrator.  And  one  might  be  subtracted  from  the 
whole,  but  to  subtract  one  of  its  events  from  a  story  is 
to  destroy  the  fiction  in  its  entirety,  a  negative  test  of 
artistry.  The  writer  of  fiction  who  subconsciously  re- 
gards his  chosen  art  as  predominantly  literary,  as  a 
mere  matter  of  arranging  words  in  pattern,  has  gone 
far  astray.  His  function  is  to  estimate  life,  to  sift  out 
for  presentation  its  aspects  most  significant  to  him, 
hence  most  interesting  to  some  others,  and  to  seek  to 
present  them  with  maximum  force  by  the  exclusion  of 
all  irrelevant  matter,  which  is  to  achieve  unity  and 
artistry.  The  substance  of  a  story  must  be  presented 
by  words  apt  and  proper  for  that  purpose,  but  the  liter- 
ary task  is,  in  fact,  secondary,  and  for  the  same  reason 
that  a  tale,  however  well  told,  is  not  a  work  of  fictional 
art. 

The  impossibility  to  unify  substance  by  devices 
merely  literary  and  rhetorical  is  sufficiently  obvious. 
The  tale  is  not  a  form  of  fiction  lower  than  the  story, 
the  fiction  of  plot;  it  is  simply  a  difi'erent  thing.  The 
former  is  a  mere  relation,  of  something,  of  anything, 
and  the  only  perfection  it  can  achieve  is  in  point  of 
expression;  the  latter  is  a  drama,  a  progression,  an 
opposition  of  forces,  a  whole,  and  it  can  touch  perfec- 
tion as  a  drama,  a  work  of  fictional  art,  and  also  in 
point  of  expression,  a  work  of  hterary  art,  like  the 
tale.  But  in  it  painstaking  manipulation  of  language 
cannot  supply  defects  of  substance. 

The  matter  of  verbal  treatment  of  substance  is  not 
quite  inclusive  of  the  matter  of  style,  of  which  so  much 
is  airily  said  and  written,  for  the  former  concerns  only 


26  FICTION  AS  ART  AND  LIFE 

fitness  to  substance  while  the  latter  imports  a  certain 
individuality  of  rhetoric  and  verbal  pattern.  Fitness 
of  expression  is  essential  to  art,  whether  literary  or 
fictional,  whether  the  work  be  tale  or  story,  but  real 
individuality  of  expression,  the  reflection  of  a  bent  of 
mind,  is  not  an  essential  of  literary  or  fictional  artis- 
try ;  style  is  rather  the  accompaniment  of  a  fine  spirit 
to  its  own  particular  song  of  life.* 

*  The  statement  that  a  tale  may  be  a  work  of  literary,  but, 
by  definition,  cannot  be  a  work  of  fictional  art,  may  seem  extreme 
to  one  who  recalls  the  many  prose  fictions  that  are  tales,  in  that 
they  lack  the  unifying  principle  of  a  central  opposition,  and  yet 
are  interesting  and  striking  relations  by  virtue  of  the  novelty 
of  their  matter — the  case  of  "Sinbad  the  Sailor" — or  because  of 
the  engaging  character  of  the  events,  plus  adequate  treatment 
of  personality — the  case  of  "Gil  Bias,"  "Rip  Van  Winkle,"  and 
many  others.  Certainly  the  statement  is  novel;  that  it  is  true 
is  equally  certain.  In  fact,  I  should  incline  to  make  complete 
acceptance  of  it  the  test  of  an  individual's  comprehension  of  the 
art,  the  essence  of  the  art,  of  fiction.  The  term  "fictional,"  of 
course,  is  used  in  the  special  and  limited  sense  in  which  alone 
it  can  have  real  meaning  in  connection  with  "art."  And  I  think 
that  a  reader  who  will  take  pains  to  realize  the  many  matters 
implied  by  "literary" — the  intelligent  choice  and  the  just  and 
pleasing  arrangement  of  matter,  whether  or  not  in  a  true 
fictional  progression,  as  well  as  verbal  treatment  of  matter — 
will  be  the  less  likely  to  condemn  my  characterization  of  the 
tale  as  a  work  of  an  art  literary  rather  than  fictional.  These 
points  of  classification  are  of  small  importance  in  one  way;  it 
matters  little  whether  any  particular  work  the  artistic  charac- 
ter of  which  is  debatable — as  "Gil  Bias" — is  episodal,  therefore 
a  tale,  or  substantially  n  true  fictional  progression,  therefore 
a  story;  but  classification  is  essential  to  discussion. 


Ill 

Just  as  in  discussing  the  point  of  form  and  art  it 
was  necessary  to  treat  of  matters  of  substance,  so,  in 
treating  of  substance,  in  discussing  fiction  as  the 
presentation  of  human  experience,  it  will  be  necessary 
always  to  imply  the  existence  of  form  and  frequently 
to  touch  upon  its  influence;  naturally  my  purpose  is 
not  the  ambitious  one  to  discuss  life  at  large,  but  merely 
tc  discuss  it  as  it  may  be  presented  in  fiction.  Though 
fiction  as  a  whole  is  potentially  inclusive  of  all  life, 
nevertheless  any  given  story  can  be  only  itself,  a  given 
substance  in  a  given  shape,  and  the  profitable  way  to 
examine  the  material  of  the  story-teller,  the  palpitat- 
ing tissue  of  life,  real  or  imaginary,  is  to  seek  for  and 
realize  the  permeating  tie  or  magnetism  which  is  at 
once  the  sign  and  essence  of  each  symmetrical  atom  ot 
fiction-material. 

As  I  have  stated  already,  this  unifying  principle 
is  the  principle  of  opposition,  of  dramatic  opposition, 
that  is,  wherein  personahty  is  involved.  For  the  writer 
of  stories  the  world  of  fact  or  of  fancy,  the  world 
he  chooses  or  is  able  to  see,  exists  as  a  solid  tissue  of 
drama,  an  involved  and  mighty  spectacle  of  the  realiza- 
tion and  defeat  of  human  effort.  He  finds  his  separate 
fables  in  the  separate  conflicts  between  individuals  that 
go  to  make  the  sum  of  life,  real  or  ideal.  As  substance, 
each  story  is  life;  as  art,  each  is  single  and  coherent. 

27 


28  FICTION  AS  ART  AND  LIFE 

By  developing  a  dramatic  opposition  the  writer  of  fic- 
tion achieves  both  of  these  conditions,  to  present  life 
as  it  is  or  might  be — ^for  Hfe  is  the  tussle  between  the 
individual  human  spirit  and  its  environment,  personal 
or  impersonal — and  to  present  the  particular  opposi- 
tion with  maximum  force  through  directness  and 
singleness  of  appeal.  He  need  trouble  about  nothing 
else.  All  the  isms  of  the  critics,  all  their  precise  an- 
alyses and  pretentious  syntheses,  he  may  forget  quite 
without  loss  to  his  work.  Such  discussion  virtually  is 
but  rough  characterization  of  the  particular  story  in 
hand,  written  along  lines  more  or  less  conventional  for 
readers  more  or  less  gullible.  And  it  is  always  aridly 
negative.  What  the  writer  should  remember  is  that  he 
seeks  to  interest  as  completely  as  possible,  that  life  as 
such  is  supremely  interesting  to  those  who  live  it,  and 
that,  because  the  single  presentment  is  the  more  force- 
ful presentment,  a  single  phase  of  life,  a  single  struggle, 
should  be  displayed  rather  than  an  indiscriminate  wel- 
ter of  incidents  and  persons. 

Thus  his  aim  to  interest  the  able  reader  dictates  that 
the  artist  in  fiction  turn  to  life,  to  human  experience  as 
such,  for  his  material;  his  aim  to  interest  as  deeply 
and  corapletely  as  possible  dictates  that  he  select  from 
the  whole  mighty  coil  of  physical  struggle  and  spiritual 
aspiration  one  single  dramatic  opposition.  He  must 
show  life  if  he  really  would  interest  at  all,  and  he  must 
show  a  single  phase  of  life,  a  single  struggle,  if  he 
would  realize  to  the  full  the  possibilities  of  his  matter. 
These  twin  necessities  have  come  into  being  with 
the  growth  of  a  public  cultured  to  react  to  the  spectacle 
of  life,  to  feel  its  zest  and  know  its  worth,  and  they 
will  become  more  urgent  as  the  whole  reading  public 
frees  its  soul  from  all  bondage  to  trivial  sensations, 
whether  the  barbaric  and  primitive  sensation  of  pure 
wonder  at  a  novel  spectacle  or  the  highly  artificial  sen- 


FICTION  AS  ART  AND  LIFE  29 

sation  of  pleasure  in  mere  complication  and  mechani- 
cal ingenuity.  Certainly  that  emancipation  was  not 
hindered  by  the  terrific  forces  that  recently  played  upon 
the  world. 

The  deteraiinant  characteristic  of  all  fiction,  short 
or  long",  new  or  old,  good,  bad,  and  indifferent,  whether 
tale  or  story,  is  movement;  something  happens.  The 
tale  passes  from  episode  to  episode,  and  though  each  is 
complete  in  itself  a  reader  always  can  look  forward  to 
yet  another.  If  what  he  has  read  was  piquant  and 
interesting,  he  expects  to  find  more  of  the  sort,  and  is 
tempted  to  read  on.  And  the  tale,  on  that  account,  in 
a  way  can  be  said  to  function  as  a  unit,  to  interest  as  a 
whole.  Of  course  there  is  continuity  as  to  some  person 
or  group  of  persons  in  every  tale,  and,  if  the  author 
has  an  eye  for  personality,  that  binding  thread  may 
count  for  much,  as  in  "Gil  Bias" ;  it  is  the  events  of  a 
tale,  essentially  isolated  episodes,  that  do  not  function 
together  to  a  single  purpose  and  end.  Apart  from  his 
interest  in  the  people  of  the  fiction,  the  reader  of  a  tale 
can  experience  continued  interest  only  in  the  low  sense 
that  he  always  can  expect  something  else  to  happen. 
In  the  story,  on  the  other  hand,  whether  unified  by  pos- 
session of  a  conventional  plot-mechanism  or  because  it 
presents  a  true  dramatic  opposition,  a  reader  not  only 
can  look  forward  to  future  action  of  some  sort,  he  can 
look  forward  also  and  more  specifically  to  a  more  or  less 
definite  range  of  occurrence  limited  by  the  conditions  of 
personality  and  situation  stated  by  the  author  at  the 
outset,  and  it  needs  no  argument  to  enforce  the  point 
that  such  a  definite  expectation  is  more  stimulating  and 
causes  a  higher  degree  of  suspense.  The  story  at  once 
presents  and  solves  a  single  specific  problem.  What  will 
this  particular  person  do  in  this  particular  situation? 
rather  than  the  vague  query,  what  will  happen  next? 
is  the  question  constantly  agitating  the  reader  of  a 


30  FICTION  AS  ART  AND  LIFE 

story,  and  the  definition  of  the  problem,  the  narrow 
range  of  conjecture  left  open,  is  precisely  the  condi- 
tion needed  to  deepen  interest  by  confining  it  within 
bounds.  The  story  unified  by  mechanism  and  the  story 
unified  by  a  natural,  unforced,  dramatic  opposition  both 
achieve  this  necessary  concentration  of  attention  and 
conjecture;  a  reader  who  is  following  out  to  the  bittei 
end  the  involutions  and  comphcations  of  a  conventional 
plot  knows  at  least  that  the  whole  is  working  together 
obscurely  to  a  single  solution,  a  smgle  end ;  but  a  story 
which  presents  a  phase  of  life  as  it  is  and  for  its  own 
sake  subjects  its  reader  to  a  further  spell.  He  knows 
that  the  whole  fiction  is  pointed  to  a  definite  and  con- 
clusive end  determined  by  the  conditions  of  personality 
and  situation  involved,  and  in  addition — since  the  thing 
is  an  atom  of  life,  a  plain  recital  of  the  actions  and  reac- 
tions of  men  and  women  at  once  vital  and  intelligible, 
human,  in  a  word — he  is  caught  and  held  by  the  de- 
tailed attraction  of  the  human  spectacle.  The  swift 
interplay  of  intellect  and  intuition,  the  rising  tide  of 
passion,  misunderstandings  and  miscalculations,  the 
alternation  of  stormy  days  and  peaceful  nights,  the 
awakening  of  birth  and  the  slumber  of  death,  the  pain 
and  joy  of  labor  and  the  ease  of  rest — all  the  great  and 
trivial  facts  of  life  appeal  in  detail  and  as  items  just 
as  the  whole  story  appeals  as  a  fact  of  life  in  itself.  The 
attraction  of  such  a  spectacle  for  the  sensitive  reader 
is  truly  irresistible.  Though  a  story  is  a  spectacle,  its 
reading  is  an  experience. 

The  tale,  episodal  and  without  a  central  movement, 
was  sufficient  to  claim  the  attention  of  simpler  men  in 
simpler  ages;  the  story  of  mechanism,  of  conventional 
plot,  largely — as  written  today  and  in  the  more  recent 
past — a  product  of  competition  with  the  stage  and  its 
artificialities  of  intrigue,  shaped  itself  as  the  artist  in 
fiction  groped  for  means  of  appeal  more  incisive  when 


FICTION  AS  ART  AND  LIFE  31 

confronted  by  a  public  less  naive  and  receptive  than 
the  audience  which  had  heard  the  wonderful  or  merry 
fables  of  an  older  time.  And  the  story  which  is  true 
drama,  which  is  hfe,  which  depends  for  interest  upon 
the  intrinsic  value  of  its  human  spectacle,  took  form 
beneath  the  hands  of  creators  great  enough  to  pierce 
through  the  conventional  husks  of  their  art  to  the 
living  substance  below,  shut  from  the  eyes  of  merb 
formahsts,  and  found  a  welcome  from  the  less  articu- 
late spirits  here  and  there  who  yet  could  react  to  the 
vital,  the  profound  magnetism  of  such  matter.  Like 
the  story  which  is  fictional  art,  a  forceful  unity,  by 
virtue  of  a  plain  human  opposition,  the  story  of  mech- 
anism has  to  do  with  life  and  the  long  march  of  man- 
kind toward  distant,  ever-vanishing  goals,  but  its 
human  substance  must  follow  a  rigidly  prearranged 
course  of  mere  physical  action,  its  great  moments  of 
climax  must  occur  at  definite  points  fixed  by  the 
mechanism — here  two  characters  must  go  into  ecstasies 
as  father  and  son  reunited,  there  the  mother  must  la- 
ment her  lost  child — while  the  scope  of  personality  as 
such  is  limited  by  the  action,  for  action  alone  can  realize 
character  adequately  in  fiction,  and  the  action  is  simply 
that  of  a  mechanism,  mechanical  and  usually  trite.  And 
smce  the  real  interest  of  any  fiction  for  an  able  reader 
resides  in  the  human  spectacle,  mechanism  at  the 
best  is  inessential  and  at  the  worst  is  crippling.  Life, 
the  natural  actions  and  reactions  of  personality,  is  more 
compelling  than  the  barren  workings  of  a  plot. 

It  has  been  a  long  process,  this  passage  of  fiction 
from  tale  to  mechanism  and  from  mechanism  to  life, 
but  in  its  final  stage  of  development — for  it  can  go  no 
further  than  to  present  life,  real  or  ideal — the  art  of 
the  story  stands  supreme  among  all  the  arts  in  point 
of  capacity  to  speak  to  the  whole  miraculous  complex 
of  the  human  soul.    Poetry  and  music,  verbal  cadence 


32  FICTION  AS  ART  AND  LIFE 

and  pure  harmony,  through  the  ear  can  stir  most 
readily  the  still  depths  of  instinctive  being  that  under- 
lie consciousness ;  painting  most  completely  can  satisfy 
the  craving  for  reality — for  truth — of  the  eye,  of  the 
whole  faculty  of  sight,  as  architecture  and  sculpture 
most  completely  satisfy  the  eye's  craving  for  propor- 
tion; but  fiction  that  is  Ufe  alone  can  satisfy  at  once 
and  completely  the  longing  of  the  human  mind  for 
stimulus  to  thought  and  the  longing  of  the  human 
heart  for  stimulus  to  emotion.  The  art  of  the  stage, 
kindred  in  point  of  substance — life,  and  aim — to 
stimulate  mind  and  heart,  is  equally  supreme  where 
efficient  at  all,  but  there  are  phases  of  life  which 
cannot  be  precipated  in  action  and  speech  on  a  few 
square  feet  of  boards ;  fiction,  written  drama,  is  poten- 
tially inclusive  of  all  life,  the  play,  acted  drama,  is  not. 
It  is  not  to  depreciate  the  power  of  dramatic  art — in 
the  usual  narrow  sense  of  stage-art — to  assert  for 
fiction  the  primacy  which  is  legitimately  its  own,  stand- 
ing, as  it  does,  first  in  power  to  pleasure  sense,  heart, 
and  intellect,  not  one,  but  all,  and  without  limitation 
as  to  substance. 

The  fact  of  dramatic  opposition,  of  struggle,  the 
essence  of  life  and  therefore  of  the  fiction  which  is  life, 
calls  for  some  examination  in  detail  apart  from  its  office 
to  unify  a  work  of  fiction  and  thereby  render  it  a  co- 
herent work  of  art,  a  single  thing  of  a  single  signifi- 
cance. The  opposition  which  man  must  meet  in  his 
pilgrimage  through  this  or  an  ideal  world  may  come 
from  his  natural  environment,  from  himself,  or  from 
his  fellows ;  each  bar  to  his  heart's  desire  is  a  natural 
unit  of  fiction;  and  by  reviewing  each  in  turn  some 
attempt  may  be  made  to  cover  the  substance  of  life. 

The  conflict  between  humanity  and  the  elemental 
forces  that  play  upon  the  earth,  even  between  humanity 
and  the  earth,  sea  and  land,  itself,  can  serve  as  sole 


FICTION  AS  ART  AND  LIFE  33 

material  for  fiction,  like  any  other  opposition  involv- 
ing individual  men.  "Robinson  Crusoe"  is  such  a  story ; 
the  best  of  the  book  contains  little  of  social  emphasis, 
of  the  attrition  of  personality  against  personality;  it 
presents  the  long,  unimpassioned  strife  between  puny 
man  the  the  wild  strength  of  the  heavens  and  the  sea, 
his  slow  toil  upon  the  obdurate  land  for  food  and 
shelter.  Or  this  primal  drama  may  serve  less  to  mo- 
tive a  fiction  than  to  round  it,  to  give  the  natural  term 
of  the  equation  of  life  as  well  as  the  social.  In  his 
paper  on  Victor  Hugo's  romances  Stevenson  has 
pointed  that  the  natural  environment  of  "The  Toilers 
of  the  Sea"  is  an  inherent  force  of  the  drama  rather 
than  a  mere  adjunct  or  setting,  and  that  is  indeed  the 
case.  Nothing  of  the  sort  can  be  found  in  English 
fiction — with  the  exception  of  Defoe's  greatest  book — 
prior  to  Hardy;  the  eighteenth  century  was  a  time 
peculiarly  unlikely  to  produce  such  work.  But  in 
Hardy,  whether  or  not  influenced  by  the  mid-Victorian 
emphasis  on  scientific  inquiry,  a  point  that  matters 
little,  the  determinative  influence  of  environment, 
natural  environment,  that  is,  finds  its  way  into  fiction. 
His  people  are  men  and  women,  as  Scott's  are 
men  and  women,  but  they  are  shaped  to  the  impress 
of  the  V/essex  moors  in  person,  heart,  and  mind;  the 
countryside  that  cherishes  and  buffets  them  has  sealed 
them  with  its  un relaxing  finger.  No  such  principle  of 
natural  determinism  can  be  found  in  Scott,  where  the 
rain  falls  only  to  drive  the  wanderer  to  shelter,  in  Aus- 
ten, or  in  Fielding,  and  the  seeming  flash  of  it  in 
Emily  Bronte's  "Wuthering  Heights"  is  only  apparent, 
not  real.  Hardy  first  and  almost  alone  in  English,  with 
the  very  trifling  exception  of  Stevenson  himself  in 
"The  Merry  Men,"  and  the  very  real  and  very  promis- 
ing exception  of  Joseph  Conrad,  has  shown  the  life  of 
man  in  relation  to  nature  as  well  as  to  himself  and  his 
fellows. 


34  FICTION  AS  ART  AND  LIFE 

The  somewhat  soHtary  position  of  the  author  of 
"The  Return  of  the  Native"  is  an  indication  of  the  loss 
sustained  by  fiction  as  a  whole  through  unintelligent 
insistence  upon  mechanism,  "plot"  in  the  narrow  sense. 
The  opposition  between  man  and  nature  presents  too 
little  opportunity  for  complication  and  involution  of 
events  to  have  attracted  the  attention  of  writers  who 
sought  to  drav/  the  crowd  by  superficial  mystery.  But 
the  opposition  is  drama,  though  not  in  the  sharp,  per- 
sonal sense  of  a  conflict  between  individuals ;  it  affords 
a  climactic  movement  equally  effective  in  sustaining 
interest  when  once  aroused;  and  it  is  a  phase  of  life 
of  real  human  significance,  hence  interesting,  even  to 
the  city-dweller.  Fiction  is  vicarious  experience,  and 
not  the  least  of  its  attraction  is  its  offer  of  an  escape 
from  life,  the  life  the  reader  lives  and  knows.  In  "The 
Nigger  of  the  Narcissus"  Conrad  shows  us  old  Single- 
ton, bronzed  by  the  suns  of  all  the  seas,  reading  Bulwer- 
Lytton's  "Pelham"  in  the  forecastle,  and  wonders  what 
interest  such  a  book  could  have  for  such  a  man,  but 
we,  snug  in  our  easy-chairs,  feet  on  radiator,  perhaps, 
read  Conrad's  book,  see  all  the  wrath  of  winds  and 
waters  play  upon  the  laboring  ship — and  do  not  wonder 
that  we  read.  These  stark  phases  of  life  in  the  open, 
the  experiences  of  men  whom  mere  commerce,  blind 
fate,  or  their  own  unrest  has  sent  to  toil  through  desert 
sands  and  arctic  snow  and  ice,  attract  by  virtue  of  a 
genuine  and  worthy  novelty,  perhaps  by  appeal  to  the 
ancient,  inherited  experience  of  the  whole  race.  And 
the  books  which  show  nature  less  as  cruel  destroyer 
than  as  a  cherishing  if  stern  parent,  which  present  the 
natural  as  well  as  the  social  element  of  life,  impress  by 
their  manifest  adequacy  and  body  even  those  of  us  who 
scratch  paper  for  a  living.  The  kiss  and  cuff  of  social 
life  are  not  the  whole  of  humanity's  troubled  journey; 
mankind,  like  an  army,  travels  on  its  stomach;  grain 


FICTION  AS  ART  AND  LIFE  86 

must  be  sowed  for  reaping,  and  the  sowers  must  bend 
to  the  earth.    They  also  serve,  in  life  and  in  fiction. 

Like  the  opposition  between  man  and  nature,  an 
opposition  between  conflicting  desires  or  motives  in  the 
same  individual  can  be  utilized  as  sole  material  for  a 
story;  Stevenson's  "Markheim"  is  an  instance,  where 
the  murderer  comes  to  see  that  he  is  marked  for  failure, 
even  in  murder,  by  quality  of  soul,  and  hastens  to  bring 
the  dreary  farce  of  his  life  to  an  end.  In  "Dr.  Jekyll 
and  Mr.  Hyde"  also,  the  unifying  opposition  is  within 
one  man  alone,  the  symbolism  of  dual  personality  as 
a  physical  fact  being  employed  for  the  sake  of  con- 
crete realization  of  the  opposition,  the  drama.  Dos- 
toievsky's "Crime  and  Punishment"  exhibits  the  strug- 
gle of  a  soul  with  itself;  it  has  the  force  of  a  scream 
of  agony  at  night.  Once  the  irretrievable  step  is 
taken,  once  the  hatchet  has  fallen  on  the  old  woman's 
head,  then  begins  the  heartshaking  spectacle  of  retribu- 
tion as  the  murderer's  mind  feeds  upon  itself.  Usually, 
of  course,  the  story  that  depends  for  unity  upon  an 
inner  conflict  will  be  short;  "Dr.  Jekyll  and  Mr.  Hyde," 
perhaps  the  longest  fiction  we  have  of  a  strictly  single 
psychological  emphasis,  is  yet  somewhat  brief,  and 
Dostoievsky  was  able  to  protract  his  spectacle  of  a 
slayer's  conscience  as  he  did  only  by  creating  a  little 
human  circle  from  which  the  unfortunate  might  creep 
apart,  a  self-branded  pariah.  But  his  reactions  to  those 
about  him  relate  only  to  his  crime,  a  phase  of  himself. 

Thus  the  struggle  of  man  with  himself  may  motive 
a  story,  though  the  intrinsic  difficulty  to  present  such 
matter,  to  devise  action  to  give  movement  to  an  opposi- 
tion so  intangible,  is  much  greater  than  any  difficulty 
to  develop  a  story  more  thoroughly  physical  in  texture. 
But  the  inner  conflict,  the  indecision  of  the  soul,  is  of 
further  use  to  the  writer  of  fiction.  His  work  may  be 
of  the  more  usual  sort,  of  a  social  emphasis,  presenting 


36  FICTION  AS  ART  AND  LIFE 

the  competition  of  men  among  themselves  for  love  or 
money,  place  or  power ;  still,  if  he  would  be  sufficiently- 
specific  as  to  personality,  he  must  show  directly,  not 
by  mere  inference  from  speech  and  action,  the  inner 
workings  of  his  people,  at  least  of  the  one  from  whose 
viewpoint  he  has  chosen  to  narrate,  in  whole  or  in  part. 
The  writer's  object  is  the  same  as  in  the  rest  of  his 
work — to  interest  and  subject  a  reader  by  developing 
a  dramatic  opposition — and  he  must  realize  personality 
with  definition  and  adequately  because  the  drama  is  a 
conflict  of  specific  personalities;  if  the  conflicting 
forces,  the  opposed  persons,  are  not  shown  as  probable 
sources  of  the  particular  drama,  the  drama  itself,  the 
whole  physical  and  psychical  complex  of  action  and 
motive,  becomes  unintelligible,  lifeless  and  formal,  non- 
existent, indeed.  It  is  not  so  much  a  matter  of  char- 
acterization, strictly,  of  dwelling  upon  personality  for 
its  own  sake,  as  it  is  a  matter  of  clearing  and  throwing 
into  relief  the  obscure  spirit-roots  of  action.  The  con- 
flict is  not  within  a  single  personality,  but  the  genesis 
of  the  opposed  motives  in  the  opposed  persons  must  be 
given  if  the  interwoven  texture  of  the  spectacle  as  true 
experience  is  to  be  preserved.  It  is  only  in  feeble  fic- 
tion that  we  find  the  pure-black  villain  or  pure-white 
hero,  the  one  oppressively  forbidding,  the  other  oppres- 
sively virtuous,  or,  worse,  unreally  forbidding  and  un- 
really  virtuous.  In  real  life  or  a  life  evolved  by  a  compe- 
tent imagination  the  implications  of  personality  are 
delicate  and  finely  shaded,  neither  to  be  neglected  nor 
smeared  in  black  and  white  save  at  risk  of  total  failure. 
The  plain  fact,  of  course,  is  that  genuine  and  worthy 
novelty  of  story  at  this  late  period  can  be  achieved  only 
by  dealing  with  the  more  subtle  and  unobtrusive 
ruances  of  soul  and  intellect — the  task  successfully  at- 
tempted by  Butler  in  "The  Way  of  All  Flesh,"  and  by 
Conrad  in  "Victory"  with  the   personality   of   Heyst. 


FICTION  AS  ART  AND  LIFE  37 

Such  shadings  cannot  be  developed  in  action  without 
first  being  stated;  at  least  there  must  be  some  com- 
ment, some  interpretation  during  the  action. 

The  social  struggle,  the  opposition  of  man  and 
man,  is  the  third  fundamental  phase  of  life  which  may 
serve  as  artistically  coherent  material  for  fiction.  With 
the  other  phases,  the  struggle  of  man  with  himself  and 
of  man  with  nature,  it  makes  the  sum  of  hfe,  real  or 
ideal,  probable,  possible,  or  conceivable.  Also,  it  is  the 
broadest  of  the  three  phases  by  virtue  of  the  infinite 
complication  and  diversity  of  man's  life  in  relation  to 
his  fellows,  the  million  possible  directions  for  his  activ- 
ity, the  million  satisfactions  for  which  he  may  strive. 
To  present  the  attrition  between  man  and  man  is  pecu- 
harly  the  function  of  the  novel,  in  the  strict  sense  of  a 
spectacle  of  persons  and  manners,  with  its  insistence 
upon  socialities  and  the  busy,  workaday  turmoil  of 
the  world,  but  such  material  is  utilized  by  fiction  of  all 
forms  and  types;  the  romance,  for  instance,  likewise 
deals  with  men  and  women  in  opposition,  reading  their 
fates  in  the  cold  or  glowing  eyes  of  their  adversaries, 
though  the  form  is  less  specifically  concrete  than  the 
novel  as  to  its  human  material,  even  its  happenings, 
tending,  rather,  in  the  direction  of  a  greater  abstrac- 
tion and  ideahty.  Most  of  the  stories  we  read,  from 
"Tom  Jones"  to  the  latest  work  of  the  newest  author, 
show  us  this  most  obvious  side  of  life,  man  against 
woman  and  against  man,  clique  against  clique,  and 
nation  against  nation.  As  in  the  other  sorts  of  struggle 
involving  personality,  there  is  a  climactic  movement  or 
progression  as  the  opposed  forces  come  to  closer  grips, 
until  some  one  force  prevails,  and  the  story  ends  be- 
couse  the  opposition  has  ended.  It  is  needless  to  expa- 
tiate on  the  life  of  man  in  relation  to  his  fellows  as 
fiction-material,  for  the  matter  has  been  utilized  as 
story-stuff  from  the  beginning,  not  always  intelligently, 


38  FICTION  AS  ART  AND  LIFE 

with  understanding  that  its  worth  was  as  experience, 
not  as  mechanism,  but  nevertheless  utiHzed  in  some 
shape. 

The  fact  that  man  has  relations  with  himself,  with 
nature,  and  with  other  men  determines  three  phases 
of  human  experience ;  all  or  any  may  serve  as  the  sub- 
stance of  fiction,  and  all  have  been  touched  upon.  It 
remains  to  discuss  briefly  another  simple  scale  of  dif- 
ferences in  life,  in  human  experience,  which  exists  in 
fact  and  which  determines  the  artistic  character  of  any 
story,  a  phase  of  life  presented  for  what  it  is.  I  have 
reference,  to  state  it  in  terms  of  life,  apart  from  fiction- 
al art,  to  the  difference  between  typical  human 
experience  and  individual,  personal  human  experience. 
The  first,  presented  in  fiction,  results  in  the  story, 
simply,  without  qualification;  the  second,  so  presented, 
results  in  the  story  of  character. 

If  a  writer  chooses  to  deal  with  persons  of  no 
marked  idiosyncracy,  merely  on  that  account  he  must 
choose  also  a  unifying  struggle  or  opposition  involving 
traits  or  motives  such  as  are  common  to  nearly  all  men, 
as  jealousy,  the  will  to  struggle  for  bare  hfe,  the  will 
to  love.  But  if  he  chooses  to  deal  with  persons  of  a 
high  individuality,  unique  as  only  the  individual  soul 
can  be  unique,  he  must  devise  also  a  unifying  conflict 
involving  the  peculiar  traits  and  motives  of  his  people, 
as  Conrad,  in  "Victory,"  devised  an  opposition  adequate 
to  reahze  Heyst's  most  striking  and  most  pecuhar  at- 
tribute, his  wish  to  withdraw  from  life  to  escape  its 
blows.  The  difference  is  between  typical  human  experi- 
ence and  personal,  individual  human  experience;  the 
one  story  is  the  story,  simply,  with  emphasis,  it  may  be 
said,  on  the  events,  the  forces  of  personality  involved 
being  so  common ;  the  other  is  the  story  of  character, 
w^ith  emphasis  on  personality,  the  events  having  no 
value  except  in  relation  to  the  particular — and  peculiar 


FICTION  AS  ART  AND  LIFE  39 

— persons.  As  Stevenson  has  said,  to  write  a  story 
one  either  must  take  a  sequence  of  events  and  create 
people  competent  to  enact  them — a  process  Ukely  to 
result  in  a  spectacle  of  typical  human  experience,  or  else 
take  certain  characters,  and  then  devise  action  to  in- 
\olve  their  peculiar  attributes,  a  process  hkely  to  result 
in  a  story  of  character.* 

The  point  that  human  experience  is  a  complex  of 
man's  relations  with  nature,  with  himself,  and  with 
his  fellows  will  be  useful  for  the  writer  to  remember 
when  searching  for  material ;  the  point  that  experience 
is  either  typical  or  individual  will  be  useful  for  him  to 
remember  that  he  may  know  precisely  what  is  beneath 
his  hands,  once  his  story,  his  phase  of  life,  is  found.  1 
have  no  intention  to  insist  pedantically  that  a  story 
should  present  but  one  single  kind  of  human  opposition, 
social,  natural,  or  psychological,  should  present  highly 
individualized  people  or  else  mere  human  dynamos  of 
action ;  it  is  only  that  one  cannot  discuss  these  matters 
at  all  except  in  order,  each  exclusively.  In  the  inter- 
ests of  artistry,  force  of  appeal,  that  is,  each  story 
should  have  one  central  motive  of  human  opposition^ 
natural,  social,  or  psychological,  but  incidental,  subor- 
dinate oppositions  of  the  other  sorts  usually  will  be 
necessary  to  round  the  whole,  to  reproduce  the  com- 

*  Stevenson  also  mentions  the  story  of  atmosphere,  and 
cites  "The  Merry  Men"  as  an  example.  In  his  phrasing,  it  is. 
an  attempt  to  express  the  "sentiment"  with  which  a  stretch  of 
coast  affected  him.  The  type — Poe's  own  by  right  of  first  inven- 
tion and  analysis — seeks  to  produce  upon  a  reader  a  single 
emotional  impression,  and  stresses  personality  even  less  than 
the  story  of  typical  human  experience.  Since  the  characters 
must  function  in  deepening  the  particular  emotional  impres- 
sion, they  are  little  more  than  personifications  of  the  "senti- 
n!ent"  itself — as  Darnaway  in  "The  Merry  Men,"  or  Usher  in 
"The  Fall  of  the  House  of  Usher" — and  on  that  account  the  type 
of  story  is  so  little  normal  that  it  may  be  disregarded  here. 


40  FICTION  AS  ART  AND  LIFE 

plete  spectacle  of  life,  whatever  its  dominant  emphasis. 
And  as  a  matter  of  fact  people  in  life  or  story  are 
either  somewhat  negative,  typical,  that  is,  of  the  broad 
outhnes  of  their  race  and  time,  or  else  positive  and  indi- 
vidual, men,  not  man. 

Statements  such  as  these,  that  insist  upon  the 
plain,  matter-of-fact  character  of  the  fiction-artist's 
material,  that  emphasize  the  necessity,  the  utility,  at 
least,  to  present  life  as  it  is  seen  in  fact  or  guessed  in 
dream,  but  always  as  life,  not  as  mechanism,  are  apt 
to  win  acceptance  from  a  reader  so  easily  that  they  are 
as  speedily  forgotten,  should  he  chance  to  attempt  a 
story  himself.  To  remforce  my  argument  that  fiction 
seeks  to  interest  by  exhibiting  human  experience  as 
such,  I  will  ask  the  reader  to  consider  for  a  moment 
the  character  of  the  bulk  of  critical  comment  on  fiction. 
How  does  the  professional  estimator  weigh  the  books 
that  fall  upon  his  desk?  Usually  he  has  a  little  to  say 
about  form  and  technique,  whether  or  not  he  knows 
anything  about  such  matters;  usually  he  has  a  little 
to  say  about  the  author's  artistic  affiliations,  the  ten- 
dencies he  represents  or  goes  against;  but  always  he 
has  much  to  say  upon  the  human  values  of  the  book, 
existent  or  non-existent.  He  takes  up  the  characters, 
one  by  one,  and  inquires  whether  they  are  natural  and 
behevable  or  mere  author-twitched  puppets.  He  esti- 
mates them  as  real  people  in  a  real  world,  commenting 
upon  their  moral  and  intellectual  qualities,  their  attrac- 
tion or  repulsion.  He  seeks  their  motives,  to  inquire 
whether  they  are  adequate,  and  he  views  their  acts, 
to  see  whether  they  accord  with  the  motives  developed. 
In  a  word,  through  the  characters  he  estimates  the 
story  as  a  phase  of  life;  if  to  him  it  appears  a  thing 
of  real  human  significance,  not  a  compound  of  triviali- 
ties, he  praises  it,  but  if  the  whole  is  a  vapid  spectacle 
of  vapid  automatons    he   condemns   it.    And   justly. 


FICTION  AS  ART  AND  LIFE  41 

The  function  of  any  story  is  to  interest  competent 
readers,  an  end  to  be  achieved  only  by  presenting  life, 
the  experience  of  the  individual  body  and  soul  as  it  is 
or  might  be;  the  function  of  the  writer  of  any  story 
is  to  search  the  life  he  knows  or  creates  in  order  to 
find  and  reveal  its  compelling  phases.  No  other  task 
can  satisfy  an  able  mind ;  no  other  result  can  effect  the 
stimulation  of  a  reader  implied  by  the  word  interest. 
For  to  entertain,  merely,  is  not  to  interest.  Life,  then, 
simply  as  such,  without  qualification  or  exclusion  of 
parts,  is  the  substance,  the  material  of  fiction.  And 
by  the  inherent  nature  of  the  vital  process,  the  oppo- 
sition between  the  living  individual  and  his  or  her  en- 
vironment, all  life  is  comprised  of  separate  progressions 
of  opposition  which  are  the  coherent  units  of  fiction  as 
well  as  of  life  itself. 


IV 

The  ultimate  utility  of  fiction — for  all  arts  have  a 
cultural  utihty,  a  capacity  to  develop  in  those  who 
enjoy  them  new  powers  of  self-realization,  new  capaci- 
ties to  react  to  the  magnetism  of  life — is  not  far  to 
seek ;  all  knowledge  is  empirical,  the  human  mind  learns 
only  through  experience,  primary  or  secondary,  and 
fiction  is  vicarious  experience.  I  would  not  suggest 
that  the  inveterate  reader  of  stories  profits  essentially 
by  the  great  mass  of  facts  he  must  absorb,  for  mere 
information,  undigested  and  incoherent,  can  impart 
neither  strength  of  mind  nor  soul.  But  contact, 
through  fiction,  with  other  lives  and  other  times,  other 
aims  and  other  fears,  cannot  fail  to  correct  a  narrow 
conception  of  the  limits  of  human  experience  and  to 
initiate  or  deepen  realization  of  the  dignity  and  worth 
of  life.  The  written  spectacle  of  hfe,  real  or  ideal,  at 
once  broadens  our  view  of  the  world,  and  concentrates, 
intensifies  it ;  we  see  our  fellows  seeking  strange  coasts 
beneath  strange  skies,  and  we  see  them  intimately, 
knowing  the  urge  of  spirit  or  circumstance  that  has 
driven  them  forth  and  the  hope  or  despair  that  buoys 
up  or  weighs  down  their  hearts.  And  this  intimacy  of 
vicarious  experience,  this  microscopic  examination  of 
alien  souls,  takes  us  from  our  accustomed  ruts  of 
thought  and  feeling  into  new  spheres  of  emotion  and 
understanding  where  we  may  experience  the  zest  and 

42 


FICTION  AS  ART  AND  LIFE  43 

sting  of  life  as  something  fresh  and  new,  not  an  old 
routine  of  outworn  sensations.  It  is  this  capacity  of 
fiction  to  reanimate  the  soul,  to  soften  or  steel  the  heart 
for  the  sweet  or  bitter  fortunes  of  each  new  day,  that 
marks  the  high  station  of  the  art  and  invests  it  with 
vitality  to  go  forward  with  the  race  and  endure.  In 
our  bustling,  industrial  world,  sculpture,  for  instance, 
perhaps  pictorial  art,  tends  to  become  academic,  the 
preoccupation  of  few  artists  and  a  narrow  pubUc,  but 
fiction,  as  it  has  ceased  to  be  a  toy  and  has  embraced 
the  stirring  life  of  man,  has  become  a  significant  fact 
and  an  influential  force,  significant  as  an  interpreta- 
tion, influential  as  a  .means  to  wake  the  multitude  to 
the  worth  of  the  life  they  are  called  upon  to  five. 

At  once  to  present  and  interpret  life,  thereby  to 
interest,  subject,  and  influence  its  readers,  a  story,  a 
form  of  art,  must  depend  for  artistic  coherence  upon 
the  substantial,  actual  coherence  of  the  phase  of  life 
with  which  it  is  concerned.  And  actual  coherence, 
true  unity,  therefore,  both  of  form  and  substance,  is 
present  only  in  the  various  human  oppositions  that 
confusedly  intermingle  to  form  the  quick,  breathing 
tissue  of  life  as  a  whole.  The  task  and  office  of  the 
artist  in  fiction  is  to  detect  with  ready  insight  the 
human  significance  of  some  particular  thread  of  oppo- 
sition, to  strip  from  it  the  obscuring  tangle  of  other 
and  immaterial  oppositions,  and,  finally,  to  body  it 
forth  for  what  it  is,  a  logical  progression  evolving  from 
its  own  proper  forces  of  personality  and  nature,  the 
whole  interfused  with  the  light  of  his  superior  intellect, 
the  warmth  of  his  warmer  heart. 

If  the  task  be  performed,  if  the  central  drama  be 
significant  and  adequately  exhibited,  the  writer's  basic 
aim  to  interest  will  have  been  achieved,  and  his  col- 
lateral function  as  an  artist,  to  enforce  realization  of 
the  worth  of  fife,  will  have  been  fulfilled. 


44  FICTION  AS  ART  AND  LIFE 

In  a  review,  published  in  1841,  of  Bulwer-Lytton's 
"Night  and  Morning,"  Poe  says,  after  defining  plot  as 
"that  in  which  no  part  can  be  displaced  without  ruin 
to  the  whole":  "Drawing  near  the  denoument  of  his 
tale,  our  novelist  had  proceeded  so  far  as  to  render  it 
necessary  that  means  should  be  devised  for  the  dis- 
covery of  the  missing  marriage  record.  This  record  is 
in  the  old  bureau  ...  at  Fernside.  .  .  .  Two  things 
now  strike  the  writer — first,  that  the  retrieval  of  the 
hero's  fortune  should  be  brought  about  by  no  less  a 
personage  than  the  heroine — by  some  lady  who  should 
in  the  end  be  his  bride — and,  secondly,  that  this  lady 
must  procure  access  to  Fernside.  Up  to  this  period  in 
the  narrative,  it  had  been  the  design  to  make  Camilla 
Beaufort,  Phihp's  cousin,  the  heroine ;  but  in  such  case, 
the  cousin  and  Lord  Lilburne  being  friends,  the  docu- 
ment must  have  been  obtained  by  fair  means ;  whereas 
foul  means  are  the  most  dramatic.  There  would  have 
been  no  difficulties  in  introducing  Camilla  into  the 
house  in  question.  .  .  .  Moreover,  in  getting  the  paper, 
she  would  have  had  no  chance  of  getting  up  a  scene. 
The  lady  is  therefore  dropped  as  the  heroine;  Mr. 
Bulwer  retraces  his  steps,  creates  Fanny,  brings  Philip 
to  love  her,  and  employs  Lilburne  (a  courtly  villain, 
invented  for  all  the  high  dirty  work,  as  De  Burgh 
Smith  for  all  the  low  dirty  work  of  the  story) — em- 
ploys Lilburne  to  abduct  her  to  Fernside,  where  the 
capture  of  the  document  is  at  length  (more  dramati- 
cally than  naturally)  contrived." 

I  do  not  reproduce  this  from  any  desire  to  injure 
Poe's  reputation — he,  poor  fellow,  was  not  responsible 
for  the  books  he  had  to  review — but  merely  to  show, 
as  emphatically  as  possible  in  brief  space,  the  essential 
feebleness  and  frivolity  of  the  story  that  is  mechanism 
and  not  life.  In  such  fiction  there  is  literally  nothing 
to  interest  a  reader  by  virtue  of  its  plain  human  worth 


FICTION  AS  ART  AND  LIFE  46 

and  significance.  "Documents" — dear  to  the  heart  of 
the  fiction-mechanic  because  a  mechanism  must  have 
some  such  hard,  physical  pivot — are  lost  and  recov- 
ered ;  it  is  all  as  devoid  of  the  breath  of  hf e  as  a  stone, 
and  would  not  interest  an  idiot.  Consider  Joseph  Con- 
rad, in  "Falk,"  that  grisly  story  of  the  mate  of  a  ship, 
dismasted  and  lost  in  antarctic  seas,  who  lurks  by  the 
fresh-water  pump  and  shoots  down  the  men  as  they 
come  to  drink  that  he  may  devour  them  and  preserve 
the  life  within  him  that  will  not  let  him  die.  "Why 
continue  the  story  of  that  ship,  that  story  before 
which,  with  its  fresh-water  pump,  like  a  spring  of 
death,  its  man  with  the  weapon,  the  sea  ruled  by  iron 
necessity,  its  spectral  band  swayed  by  terror  and  hope, 
its  mute  and  unhearing  heaven? — the  fable  of  the 
'Flying  Dutchman'  with  its  convention  of  crime  and 
its  sentimental  retribution  fades  hke  a  graceful  wraith, 
like  a  wisp  of  white  mist."  Or  the  same  writer,  in  the 
preface  to  "The  Nigger  of  the  Narcissus" ;"....  the 
artist  .  .  .  speaks  to  our  capacity  for  delight  and 
wonder,  to  the  sense  of  mystery  surrounding  our  lives : 
to  our  sense  of  pity,  and  beauty,  and  pain :  to  the  latent 
feeling  of  fellowship  with  all  creation — and  to  the 
subtle  but  invincible  conviction  of  solidarity  that  knits 
together  the  loneliness  of  innumerable  hearts,  to  the 
solidarity  in  dreams,  in  joy,  in  sorrow,  in  aspirations,  in 
illusions,  in  hope,  in  fear,  which  binds  men  to  each 
other,  which  binds  together  all  humanity — the  dead  to 
the  living  and  the  living  to  the  unborn. 

"It  is  only  some  such  train  of  thought,  or  rather 
ot  feeling,  that  can  in  a  measure  explain  the  aim  of  the 
attempt,  made  in  the  tale  which  follows,  to  present  an 
unrestful  episode  in  the  obscure  lives  of  a  few  indi- 
viduals out  of  all  the  disregarded  multitude  of  the  be- 
wildered, the  simple  and  the  voiceless.  For,  if  there 
i.-:  any  part  of  truth  in  the  belief  confessed  above,  it 


46  FICTION  AS  ART  AND  LIFE 

becomes  evident  that  there  is  not  a  place  of  splendor  or 
a  dark  comer  of  the  earth  that  does  not  deserve,  if 
only  a  passing  glance  of  wonder  and  pity." 

The  artist  in  fiction  has  the  world  before  him,  the 
world  of  fact  about  him  or  the  world  of  conception 
within;  he  has  but  to  choose.  From  all  the  four  cor- 
ners of  the  earth  he  may  catch  the  enduring  and  vivid 
voice  of  humanity  crying  for  expression,  in  whispers 
of  love  and  moans  of  pain,  resonant  in  victory,  cravenly 
whimpering,  it  may  be,  in  defeat,  but  always  speaking 
loudly  to  him  and  to  all  men  of  the  heartshaking  inter- 
est of  the  fate  of  the  individual  soul,  passing  by  obscure 
ways  to  unknown  ends.  And  he  has  before  him  the 
world  of  books,  the  work  of  his  brothers  in  spirit  gone 
before,  wherein  he  may  trace  the  living  current  of  the 
fiction  that  is  life  from  its  small  and  unregarded  source 
to  its  full  and  much  analyzed  tide  of  the  recent  past 
and  the  present,  a  task,  a  pleasure  that  can  react  upon 
him  only  to  his  profit,  the  gain  of  his  own  work.  Let 
him  first  realize  his  function  and  his  task — to  interest, 
to  do  his  part  in  making  the  race  more  keenly  alive,  a 
finer  human  precipitate;  let  him  fire  his  mind  with 
curiosity  and  warm  his  heart  with  sympathj'';  then,  if 
he  is  chosen  of  the  gods,  let  him  snare  in  a  few  drops 
of  ink  a  soul  in  its  supremest  moment  of  triumph  or 
agony.  Though  the  soul  and  its  agony  or  triumph  be 
poor  and  common,  of  the  earth,  earthy,  the  triumph 
of  the  artist  will  not.  For  by  the  singleness  of  his  aim, 
the  repeated  suggestion  to  one  end  of  word  and  sub- 
stance, he  will  have  seized  from  out  the  turmoil  of  hfe 
a  shining  or  sombre  vision  of  joy  or  terror,  not  less 
human  than  the  reality  because  presented  with  some- 
thing of  the  emphasis  of  obsession,  not  less  worthy  as 
art  because  it  is  life  and  not  lies. 


NOTICE 

Aspiring  writers  and  readers  inter- 
ested in  the  technique  of  writing,  or 
interested  in  the  technique  of  writing,  or 
the  problems  of  writers,  will  find  much 
material  of  real  interest  and  value  in  the 
twice  monthly  numbers  of  The  Editor. 
Subscriptions,  which  cost  $2.00  each  per 
year,  may  be  sent  to  the  publisher,  The 
Editor  Company,  Ridgewood,  New  Jersey. 
Overleaf  will  be  found  brief  notices  of 
books  for  writers  also  published  by  The 
Editor  Company. 


BOOKS  FOR  WRITERS 

Roget's  Thesaurus,  (New  large  type  edition) $1.65 

The  Writer's  Book,  Compiled  by  William  R.  Kane 2.50 

1001  Places  To  Sell  Manuscripts, 

Compiled  by  William  R.  Kane 2.00 

Practical  Authorship,  James  Knapp  Reeve 1.50 

The  Fiction  Factory,  John  Milton  Edwards 1.50 

Photoplay  Making,  Howard  T.  Dimick 1.00 

The  American  Short  Story,  Elias  Lieberman 1.00 

Points  About  Poetry,  Donald  G.  French 60 

The  Editor  Manuscript  Record 60 

Rhymes  and  Meters,  Horatio  Winslow 50 

Fiction  Writer's  Workshop,  Duncan  Francis  Young 50 

The  Way  Into  Print   25 

Essays  on  Authorship 25 

What  Editor's  Want 25 

How  to  Be  a  Reporter 15 

How  to  Write  a  Short  Story,  Leslie  W.  Quirk 50 

The  Thirty-Six  Dramatic  Situations,  Georges  Polti 1.20 

Eighty-Eight  Ways  to  Make  Money  by  Writing, 

Homer  Cvoy 1.00 

Idols  and  Ideals,  Charles  Leonard  Moore 1.75 

An  Alphabet  Book  for  Writers,  F.  G.  Webster 1.00 

Writing  for  the  Trade  Press,  Frank  Farrington 1.00 

The  Technique  of  Fiction  Writing,  Robert  Saunders  Dowst.   1.75 

Thoughts  and  Opinions  on  Writing,  William  R.  Kane 15 

The  Making  of  Contemporary  Verse,  Marguerite  Wilkinson.     .35 
The  Soldier's  Scrap  Book,  Compiled  by  William  R.  Kane. . .     .60 

A  Theory  of  Prose  Fiction,  Robert  Saunders  Dowst 60 

The  Newspaper  Correspondent's  Guide,  Alton  D.  Spencer. .     .60 
The  Country  Publisher,  E.  A.  Little 75 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 

Los  Angeles 

This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


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